The Ministry of Intellectual Property (“MOIP”) has announced that the Amended Design Protection Act entered into force on November 28, 2025, to improve the Partial-Substantive Examination System (“PSES”) and to further safeguard the rights of legitimate right holders.Maintenance of Fair Market Practices by Eliminating Unfair Design RightsWhile the Design Protection Act generally adopts the Substantive Examination System (“SES”), which reviews all registrat

A major South Korean patent dispute concerning the gastroesophageal reflux disease treatment K-CAB tablets (tegoprazan) reached a resolution on November 20 2025. The Korean Supreme Court affirmed earlier rulings in favour of the patentee by dismissing the final three appeals lodged by generic companies without further substantive review.The generics had argued that the scope of the substance patent during the patent term extension (PTE) should be limited t

The South Korean Intellectual Property High Court (the IP High Court) has recently rendered a decision dismissing the use of the ‘abuse of right defence’ in invalidation actions. In the decision, given the difference in nature between invalidation and infringement litigation, the court held that even when an invalidation trial is filed on the basis of a prior design right that itself would likely have been invalidated, this does not constitute an abuse of

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